


Worry, Anxiety, Fear

by angerwasallihad



Series: Behind the Curtain [10]
Category: Major Crimes (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Mother!ship, Special Master
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-07 15:32:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angerwasallihad/pseuds/angerwasallihad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final in this series of enhanced and expanded scenes from Sharon's perspective. </p><p>"That was the Rusty she knew. Not some scared and defensive kid who lashed out at everyone who came near him. He was smart. And quickly witty. And made her laugh unexpectedly. He held his own with all the adults in his life; even, it seemed, with sociopathic serial killers."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Worry, Anxiety, Fear

**Behind the Curtain, part X**

**Special Master:**

**Worry, Anxiety, Terror**

There was a difference, Sharon knew, between worry and anxiety. The former was almost comforting, a constant reminder of her love, a feeling she could always count upon as each of her children let go of her hand and walked alone. Each time was its own little bereavement; thousands of moments over the years, tiny cuts that never quite healed over, leaving memories like scars on the skin of her life. But the worry was always there waiting. Worry that Ricky might fall as he took his first steps. That Emily might get hurt as she dropped her hand and ran excitedly into that first day of kindergarten. That Rusty might find something he did not want to know as the elevator doors closed, hiding him and Daniel Dunn from her sight before they descended.

 

The worry reminded her that she had something to lose.

 

But also that she had something to love more than herself.

 

Anxiety, though, Sharon thought as she closed her bedroom door softly and turned to lean against it heavily while her hands wrapped around herself in a protective and comforting stance, anxiety was that sick feeling in her stomach. That constant twisting within that kept her up at night and made her voice shake. It was Emily moving into that first rat-trap of an apartment in Brooklyn with strangers. It was Ricky backpacking in Europe for weeks without a word. It was strapping Rusty into a kevlar vest before sending him out the door.

 

Anxiety was ugly.

 

A reminder of how powerless she really was.

 

This was the part of parenting that was always the hardest. Sharon slid down the surface of the door inch-by-inch before eventually curling in on herself at the floor, knees drawn up against her chest, arms wrapped around them, pulling them almost desperately into her torso. These moments, when she had to let go and stop pushing. When she had to stop and live with the worry and even the anxiety.

 

Ricky and Emily had given her their fair shares of worry and anxiety; but as in most respects, Rusty presented a completely new and different set of challenges. There was a fine line to be toed, that line between advocating for his autonomy and setting reasonable boundaries. Her eyes drifted shut as an old memory washed over her, curled on the floor by her bedroom door.

 

_“I know when people want something from me, and he--he wants something.”_

_Sharon nodded slowly, trying to find the right words. Words that would remind him that she would always know him, that she would not let go of his hand; not until he was ready. But words that would not shatter the fragile trust and understanding that now stretched between them. Words that could settle in that place between his shoulderblades, supporting but not pushing, coming to rest on his back like her palm so often longed to do._

_Smiling gently, she finally said the only thing that came to mind. “I wish I could go with you.”_

_“Me too.”_

_Looking at him now, words were not enough. “C’mere.”_

_And in a single movement, she finally pulled him into her arms, communicating all that those few words could not. The worry. The support. Maybe even the love she dared not voice yet. Sharon held him in her arms, holding tightly for those last moments before she knew he would walk away, all on his own. She clasped him to her, glancing briefly over his shoulder at Daniel. Enveloping Rusty in all she had to give in the hope that it might help that sick feeling in her stomach, Sharon held on._

_Until they both knew she had to let go._

_“Okay,” she whispered, stepping back at last. Her eyes would not meet his, not yet. Sharon was not sure if it was an unwillingness to see what laid in his, or the fear of what he might see in her own. Flatly, still fighting the voices within that were screaming in protest within her, she said, “Call me if you need me.”_

_“I will.”_

_“Say it again,” she breathed intently, meeting his eyes at last and hoping that Rusty’s words might help to quell the turmoil inside, the horrible feeling that washed over her every time she looked at the man standing just down the hall._

_“I **will.** ”_

_Mollified for the moment, she finally smiled and outwardly relaxed, feeling him drop the hand neither of them realized he had been holding since that first night in her condo all those weeks ago._

_“Thank you,” she whispered, and gestured for him to go on ahead of her._

 

Opening her eyes once more, Sharon shook her head slightly, pushing the memory away. But Daniel’s words still echoed across the years. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him. But she had worried. Worried from the moment he had stepped out of her arms until the following night, after all the photographs and first aid had been taken care of, worried until he finally stepped back into the safety of her embrace. Sharon had worried.

 

And with good reason.

 

The true, debilitating anxiety with which she was now so well acquainted had come much later. It was more than those little moments of concern, considering the things that could go wrong when he got behind the wheel. More than those twinges of uncomfortable uncertainty when Rusty went off for a visit at the jail.

 

No, this anxiety was the cold in her veins as she clutched a stack of letters, tears streaming down her face in the hallway. It was strapping her beautiful boy into a kevlar vest and sending him out the door with nothing but a can of pepper spray, a lunch bag, and an ever-increasing pile of threatening letters hanging over his head.

 

_Even with his security detail ever-present, it was weeks between that moment in the hallway with the stack of letters in hand and Sharon’s next full night of sleep. And when she did sleep, the nightmares would come. Four letters in as many weeks, and she was starting to fray around the edges. It was becoming hard to tell the dreams from reality._

_Work was winding down, a stack of paperwork from the recent case in front of her, awaiting her signature. Rusty was sitting in the chair in the corner while he scribbled away in his notebook. It was quiet._

_Until the gunshots rang out. Across the office, Rusty jumped to his feet and scrambled across the room toward her. He had nearly reached her when she felt something wet spray across her face. Then she heard the gunshot. Before she had time to do more than drop to the ground with a cry of shock, she saw Rusty’s body sail past her, his earlier momentum combined with the velocity of the impact sending him flying into the window behind her. As the window shattered and he fell to the ground outside, Sharon watched with a wordless scream._

_Her eyes snapped open as she woke with a start, suddenly realizing that her own scream had woken her. There was a rustle of hurried footfalls outside her door before a tousle-haired Rusty burst through it, armed with a thick book this time rather than her lamp. Sharon was sitting upright in the bed now, heart still racing but with her usual outward calm._

_“What’s wrong? Are you--”_

_A pounding at the apartment door interrupted his inquiries, and Sharon sighed, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and rising to her feet. Of course the officers outside had heard her cry as well. She touched Rusty’s arm briefly as she passed._

_“It’s alright. Put the book back and go to bed, honey.”_

_“But--”_

_Rusty started to protest, but she silenced him with a look on her way down the hall. Reaching the door, Sharon spoke quietly with the officers stationed there for a moment, assuring them that everything was alright before closing the door once more and heading back down the hall. Rusty was standing uncertainly in the hallway, halfway between her bedroom and his, no longer armed with anything more than the fearful and worried look in his eyes._

_“Rusty. Go back to bed. Everything is fine.”_

_He still looked uncertain. “But Sharon. You, like, screamed.”_

_She attempted a reassuring smile. She was not sure she was successful. “I’m alright, Rusty. Don’t you worry about me.” Sharon reached up and squeezed his shoulder tentatively, comforting. “You go on and get some sleep.”_

_He turned from her when she released him, shuffling back towards his bedroom. At the last moment, he turned back to speak again._

_“Look, Sharon.” He glanced down at his bare feet. “I know I should have--I wasn’t--I’m sorry.” He looked up at her, his lower lip trembling ever-so-slightly. “I just--I didn’t want you to send me away.”_

_Sharon’s defensive posture fell away at his earnest expression. “Oh, Rusty,” she breathed, taking a few steps toward him and reaching out again, this time for his hand. “You are not going anywhere unless you decide to.” She squeezed his hand in hers, tears glistening in her eyes. “Alright?”_

_“Okay.”_

_She smiled, genuine this time. “Don’t worry. Now go back to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”_

_And he finally turned, dropping her hand._

_The irony of her words did not escape Sharon. She never could take her own advice._

 

The anxiety was rooted in fear. Not just the passing sense of alarm in her heart when her foot missed a step, or when Ricky called at three in the morning. It was hard; its cold steel in her mouth tasting almost coppery as her teeth clenched. It was quiet; like the simmering boil of her voice when she did speak. It was sharp; the pointed end of her misgivings digging in deeper with every moment.

 

And it always went away, eventually. Until now.

 

Holding herself together with her bare hands on the floor of her bedroom, Sharon was certain of one thing: he would never be safe. He hadn’t been safe since that moment in his cubicle more than a day ago now.

 

_“Look at me.”_

_Sharon could feel Rusty losing his cool ever so slightly as she drew his gaze back to her face, away from the activity behind her. His eyes found hers again, and almost immediately she could see the fear drop away. Whatever familiar twisted feeling she had inside, there was also a not-insignificant layer of pride. At her son’s desire to face this, head on, instead of running away. He was headed somewhere so different now than where he had intended to run that night when Stroh had chased him off a cliff. He was still running. But now he was running toward something, determined not to take this man and that night with him._

_Smiling in pride and assurance, she left him one last chance to claim this new destination, this life with choices that were his own. “When you’re ready.”_

_And, ignoring the cutting edge of her misgivings, the cold steel of her fear, the simmering boil of her anxiety, she stepped away from Rusty and into the electronics room without another word._

_When she entered, Mike immediately stepped back from the desk, pulling a chair out for her silently beside Buzz. But she shook her head politely, moving to stand behind the two of them instead. Sharon could not sit for this. She needed to be able to move in immediately; no matter how many armed men now stood at the ready, she needed to be ready as well. And the tight ball of emotion now wadded inside her would not allow her to sit. No, she would stand for this one._

_The door on the monitor opened only moments after she began to watch, and Rusty stepped in. The fear that had flashed so briefly across his face earlier was gone. He was not comfortable, she could tell. But he was not giving up his control. Not to the man in the chair across the room. With satisfaction, Sharon watched as Rusty took her previous words to heart, refusing to step closer than necessary as Stroh began to speak to him, pulling at the frayed edges of Rusty’s resolve that all three of them knew existed. For a while, the other people gathered around the monitor seemed to disappear, and it was just the three of them alone._

_But Rusty held his ground._

_“...actually, in the last ten years, you’ve killed more people than the State has. And you tried to kill me.”_

_Sharon almost smiled at that. That was the Rusty **she** knew. Not some scared and defensive kid who lashed out at everyone who came near him. He was smart. And quickly witty. And made her laugh unexpectedly. He held his own with all the adults in his life; even, it seemed, with sociopathic serial killers._

_It was almost funny. If it weren’t for the screaming within her._

_“...I mean, who wants to leave witnesses lying around?” Sharon heard Stroh saying to Rusty now. “You’re living proof of how dangerous that can be, right?”_

_And immediately, Sharon went cold, a bucket of ice falling into her stomach at the words and Stroh’s subsequent action._

_He shifted in the chair, his shackles clinking menacingly. And Sharon’s fists clenched against her body reflexively as Rusty immediately stepped back._

_“Relax, okay?” Stroh held his hands up demonstratively. “I am incapable of reaching you from here.”_

_But Rusty didn’t relax. And neither did Sharon._

_‘Reach’ was such a relative term, Sharon thought with her eyes still glued to the monitors. Stroh may not have moved from the chair, but he was inching toward her son with every word. That’s what worried her about this entire situation. How easily he might bring Rusty within reach. How, with one comment, he could plant a seed that would grow into something terrible and unmanageable in Rusty’s mind._

_“So. Moving on. I understand that Emma Rios has asked you for an impact statement.”_

_Rusty didn’t falter._

_“Yeah. What about it?”_

_“I was just wondering if, in addition to the dust-ups we’ve had, you might want to include some of the positive effects I’ve had on your life.”_

_Sharon inhaled deeply, her eyes never leaving Rusty on the monitor. That, she thought with chagrin, was exactly the sort of thought that Rusty did not need festering in his mind. She watched intently as Rusty processed the words, searching his face for any sign of trouble._

_“Positive effects?”_

_“By becoming a material witness for the State, you were taken off the streets. And out of a life of prostitution. An incredibly unsafe profession.”_

_Sharon willed herself to breathe, standing stock-still in front of the monitors. Willed the tightly coiled sick feeling in her stomach not to explode as Stroh continued._

_“You gained a mother, got a high school degree. You think anyone around here would have given a shit about you if it hadn’t been for me?”_

_A small hiss escaped Sharon’s lips at that, and she felt everyone in the room turn to look at her as one, but did not acknowledge it, her gaze still fixed on the monitors as Rusty responded._

_“Okay, but what about the interest Wade Weller took in me?”_

_“Who?”_

_And for the first time, Rusty seemed indignant._

_“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know his name. **Wade Weller** , the freak who you had write me threatening letters and who you ordered to kill me. Okay, that **Wade Weller**.”_

_Sharon watched with growing concern as Rusty moved closer to the table separating him from Stroh, praying that he would not forget her advice in his anger. Almost as one, Sharon and Rusty both shifted their weight forward as Rusty spoke, the two of them as a single unit leaning onto the surfaces in front of them in a seamless and characteristic stance of principled conviction._

_“You think I should change my impact statement because you changed my life? Well get this from me, okay?”_

_Eyes never leaving his face, Sharon watched intently as Rusty’s anger at this man boiled to the surface. There was a time, not long ago, when Rusty would have let the fury and indignant feelings about the fairness of his past and present take over and get away from him. When words would have failed him in the face of his angry frustration. But now, Sharon saw with pride, even as the tight cold ball of anxiety twisted painfully at his proximity to the other man, Rusty took that boiling fury and channeled it into his words, into the hands bearing down on the table, and into his sharp and unwavering gaze._

_Sharon knew where he had learned to do that. Realized it as she herself looked down and noticed that she had shifted into an identical stance on the back of Buzz’s chair, her own wrath coursing down her fingers and onto the surface beneath._

_“I changed yours, okay? **I. Changed. Yours.** ”_

_“I know, and I never forget it, Rusty.”_

_Suddenly, Sharon found her pride overwhelmed once more by the anxiety just under the surface breaking through. That tone was no longer casual or conversational. It was the ugly unfiltered sound of the monster within._

_“But to be completely fair, to be completely honest, we changed each other’s lives. As we were fated to do. And we will have the power to change each other again.”_

_Sharon took in another series of deep breaths, pushing hard against the images and scenarios floating to her mind at those words. It was the closest to a direct threat Stroh could make, and she knew it. She stared at the shackles on his wrists and ankles projected on the monitor in front of her and felt her heart slow again._

_“Change each other how?”_

_“Oh, I don’t know, I can’t see that far ahead. But our lives have been intertwined, yours and mine. A pattern has begun to emerge, wouldn’t you say? And that pattern is destiny.”_

_As Stroh moved towards Rusty again and Rusty’s ire dissipated in the midst of his confusion at the words, her son stepped away from the table again, straightening._

_“And when you finally see destiny, Rusty, in all her glory…”_

_He trailed off for a moment as they all listened intently._

_“Destiny’s like an arrow. Pointing toward the end.”_

In hindsight, of course, it all made sense to Sharon. The carefully dropped clues, the hints spelling out how detailed Stroh’s plan really was. Three more times since Rusty’s declaration in her office earlier that night, three more times Sharon had tried to talk him out of his decision to forgo individual security. And each time, the coiled ball in her abdomen grew tighter and more painful.

 

Rusty was part of that sociopath’s plan. Rusty and his ‘end.’

 

Sharon remembered, once, seeing an interview with a serial killer on Death Row. His words floated back to her all these years later. Before I met them, they were dead. After I met them they were dead. It was just a way of life.

 

As she sat on her bedroom floor, still curled in upon herself, she wondered if there was any hope in his existence.

 

Or if he really was already dead.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The first time Rusty caught her at it, Sharon was not even sure he was surprised. He walked in the front door, tossed his bag onto the couch and turned to her calmly.

 

“Sharon, you have got to just relax and call off the cops on my tail.”

 

When she had eventually relented, agreeing, the look of glee on Rusty’s face almost loosened the hot metal in her stomach.

 

“Buzz owes me twenty bucks.”

 

It was a mark of how worried she was that she did not even comment on the gamble.

 

Sharon did not sleep for the two weeks Rusty went without security.

 

The second time he caught her was nearly four months later. Someone was careless, and after three and a half months of near-seamless invisible security, Rusty made them. This time, he shouted.

 

Sharon listened, trying once more to impress upon him the imminent danger.

 

But he didn’t listen.

 

Three sleepless weeks later, she traded in her constant anxiety for a healthy dose of worry. And he caught her almost immediately.

 

The third and last time, Rusty threatened to move out.

 

And so Sharon made a deal. With herself this time. She traded in her peace-of-mind for his autonomy. Decided to live with the underlying anxiety for his safety during the day instead of an unmanageable all-consuming fear for his well-being every moment.

 

A year after Stroh’s escape, and Sharon still did not really sleep. Not like she used to. There was a rhythm to her life now, with Rusty still at home but still in constant danger. The sick feeling in her stomach was almost normal now.

 

So when she came home that night, later than usual, Sharon stepped out of her shoes in the elevator, before she had even reached her floor. She slung them over an arm when the doors slid open and walked tiredly to the door, fumbling a little with the keys in her other hand before turning the lock and pushing open the door.

 

She heard him before she saw anything.

 

Rusty’s strangled cry of, “Mom, don’t--!” (she still was not used to hearing him say it)

 

Then her eyes found him, sitting on a chair just inside the door, a bleeding gash over his eye, looking horrified at something in the hallway over her shoulder.

 

And as something collided with her skull, hard, behind her, Sharon caught Rusty’s eyes one last time while she fell. This was not worry. This was not anxiety.

  
This was terror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yes, I am just going to leave it there. Rage at me if you want, but that’s just how I see it. And you know, I’m just plain evil. Love to hear your thoughts on this and the season in general, of course! And don’t forget to check out my Mother!ship AU starting later this week, called Cui Bono.


	2. Crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon’s life was a castle of cards, just like everyone else’s. And one tiny tremor, one misplaced piece, one small breath of wind was all it would take to bring it crashing down around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright I caved. I really wanted to leave you all with that unsettled, fearful feeling for the hiatus (because we all know that Sharon is going to be feeling that way until this is all settled) but the repeated screams and pleads from you all convinced me to fix it. Well, sort of. I had a hard time deciding where exactly to put this. It is not stand alone, like the other installments of this series, so in the end I just added it as a second part of the last tag. I hope it all makes sense chronologically and thematically. Enjoy.

_Behind the Curtain_

_Part XI_

_Crash_

 

Life was a series of moments, Sharon knew. Each one stacked upon the one before it like so many delicate cards reaching to the ceiling in fragile tiers. Each choice, each moment, each card finding purchase on the one below. And no single moment existed on its own; it needed the others in order to stand. Sometimes, as she placed a card, made a choice, took note of each moment, she could see the path of the next card, and the next, and the shape of the tower built card by card. Other times it took a long time for her to see the shape and the placement of the cards.

Sharon’s life was a castle of cards, just like everyone else’s. And one tiny tremor, one misplaced piece, one small breath of wind was all it would take to bring it crashing down around her.

As she came to groggily, blinking against the lights of her apartment, she knew that the wind had finally come for her.

“Come on, Captain. Come on.”

She blinked as something clicked under her eyes, next to her ear, above her face. Finally, painfully, her head rose from her chest and her eyes took in the horror before her.

Sharon was sitting in one of her red swiveling chairs, her back to the front door. There was something taped over her mouth tightly--duct tape, she decided-- and her hands had been pulled and bound painfully behind her, caught between the fabric of the chair and her back. Her bare feet and ankles were similarly restrained with more tape. The skirt of her dark blue dress had hiked itself up, probably while her assailant transferred her from the floor into the chair. It was uncomfortable, though not necessarily immodest, and she squirmed ever so slightly in an effort to force it back down her knees.

“Ah, there you are, Captain. Nice of you to join us.”

Kneeling down in front of her, Phillip Stroh had been snapping his fingers around her face in an effort to rouse her.  His face was completely calm, even mildly amused but not wholly interested. Looking past him at last into the rest of the room, she saw Rusty, directly across from her in the matching chair, just where he had been when she had entered. She could not quite make out his face, partly due to the pounding dizziness in her head, and partly due to her missing glasses. They must have been somewhere on the floor behind her. Not sure if he was conscious, she adopted what she hoped was a reassuring expression as she continued to silently rock back and forth to lower the hem on her thighs to a more comfortable length.

“Oh, Captain, I’m sorry about that,” he whispered quietly to her, noticing her squirming for the first time as he knelt in front of her. His face was so close to hers that she could feel his breath on her face, the breath that had brought her so carefully balanced life of cards tumbling down tonight. Sharon tried to breathe calmly and deeply through her nose, the tape over her mouth and her own raw fear restricting the action. Despite it all, she stared back at him coldly, her gaze never wavering.

Still kneeling in front of her, she felt his hand fall onto her knee. For the first time, she flinched, recoiling from the touch, knowing that he could see the real unmasked fear flash across her face. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blurred shape of Rusty across the room move suddenly and violently, presumably fighting against his own restraints with a muffled cry. Mastering her terror once again, Sharon went stock-still as she felt both his hands come down to rest on the small gap of skin between her knees and the hem of her dress.

But he merely tugged it down, smoothing it over her legs with a polite smile. The raw fear in her eyes for that brief moment had not escaped him, however. He quirked an eyebrow at her quizzically.

“Really, Captain?”

His voice was soft, polite, his face still so close to hers that his breath rushed across her face with every word. Her eyes never left his, however. Sharon’s gaze was unyielding.

“I thought you knew me better than that.”

Stroh’s eyes raked over her form, from her bare feet up her legs, past her knees where both his hands were still resting, over her torso and up to her face again.

“You’re not my type.”

With a click of his tongue, he finally pulled one hand from her leg and reached into his breast pocket, removing her glasses from it.

“Old,” he breathed, unfolding the glasses and settling them back on her nose delicately without giving her an inch.

“Dried up,” he continued almost conversationally, his eyes looking pointedly around her apartment, lingering on the single wine glass resting on the table that Rusty must have pulled out for her.

“Frigid,” he finished softly, dragging his remaining hand down her knee slowly until at long last they no longer touched.

And throughout it all, Sharon did not move. She did not flinch again, and she did not look away. He was right. She knew she was not his ‘type.’ She was not young or blond or vulnerable. She did not let him get under her skin; not visibly, at any rate. She did not need a male partner. And she did not lose control. Sharon Raydor was everything he hated about women, and they both knew it. Because his crimes were never about sex or violence or even killing. It was always about control. Control over a gender he deemed to be inferior and emasculating. Control over the branch of humanity not worthy or able to satisfy him. Control over his own hatred. The control that Sharon and women like her refused to give him. She was not his type. But no woman really was. And that was the problem.

At last, Stroh looked away, getting back to his feet and turning from her, probably in search of another avenue of terror and control, Sharon knew. As he backed away, her eyes drifted across the room to Rusty in the matching chair across from her. With her glasses once more perched upon her nose, she could now take in every detail of his face.

Part of her wished she couldn’t.

The skin around his right eye was swollen and red, a color she thought would soon darken to a splotchy purple and green. There was a streak of dried blood on his chin, peeking out from under the silver tape across his mouth, and she suspected his lip had been split open, not unlike that night years ago when she had patched him up on the sofa a few feet away. She wondered if he was thinking of that night as well as his eyes followed her gaze to the sofa just beside them, then back up to her. There was a long cut along his forehead, parallel to his hairline. The blood stained those little pieces of hair she had such a habit of pushing back from his brow, the hair now sticking in brownish clumps to his skin around the bleeding slice on his face.

Sharon dropped her eyes, just for a moment, and tried to put the pieces back together. Tried to find the cards of these moments, to understand. Her eyes lit upon several shards of glass at her son’s feet, the remnants of a picture frame a few inches away. In a flash, it came together, the tower of cards intact for a brief moment while the image of Phillip Stroh silently bringing the edge of the frame down to collide with Rusty’s face. The glass shattered, in Sharon’s mind, the frame falling apart in their captor’s hands. The photograph within it slowly drifting to the ground where it now lay on the floor, drifting down like the cards of Sharon’s life. She tore her eyes away from the shattered glass, the mangled frame, and the frozen image of herself and Rusty laughing triumphantly in the wake of the legalization of their familial bond. She dragged her eyes back up to her son’s and held them intently as Stroh began to speak again.

Their captor slowly proceeded across the room, parallel to the coffee table that separated his victims. His focus shifted obviously to Rusty, but he never turned his back to Sharon as he approached Rusty from the side.

“But you, Rusty.”

Sharon’s fists clenched behind her as Stroh’s hand reached out to ruffle Rusty’s hair, but she did not flinch. She did not look away from Rusty’s eyes, a steely line stretching between them, connecting them silently.

“Blonde,” Stroh whispered, coming behind Rusty with a hand still in his hair, eyes glued on Sharon once more.

She ignored his gaze, staring intently into Rusty’s face, hoping he realized that Stroh could no longer make out his expression now that their captor stood behind Rusty.

“Young,” Stroh continued casually, sliding his hand down the back of Rusty’s head and onto his shoulder, eyes never leaving Sharon’s, waiting for her to flinch. Waiting for her to crumble.

Sharon heard the words. She felt her skin crawl, felt her heart crack. But still she did not falter. She did not break. She did not let go.

Slowly, she saw Rusty’s eyes shift from hers to something over her shoulder, behind her, pointedly, before dropping to stare at the narrow space between the table and the sofa to her right.

“If it weren’t for that one little detail...” Stroh said quietly, coming around on Rusty’s other side and crouching down to Rusty’s eye level. As he did so, Rusty’s eyes shifted back to Sharon’s, no hint of the silent communication that had passed so briefly between them on his face when Stroh’s gaze moved from Sharon down to Rusty. Sharon blinked once, meaningfully at Rusty in acknowledgement.

“I’m not into guys,” Stoh finished bluntly.

And finally, his back turned, his focus entirely on Rusty now as he crouched in front of him.

Immediately, silently, Sharon shifted. Glancing behind her, she saw Rusty’s point; her bag on the floor where it had fallen upon her entry tonight. Turning quickly back to face her predicament, she ignored the splitting pain in the back of her head. Without a sound, she turned in her seat, angling her legs and bare feet to the left and pulling her back and shoulders around to the right and lifting her tape-bound hands awkwardly so that they hung over the back of the chair’s arm, suspended between the table and chair.

In those few seconds, Stroh’s back remained to her while he spoke directly to Rusty. “If circumstances had just been slightly altered, we might have changed each other in very different ways.”

Still completely silent and unobserved, Sharon pushed with her bare feet against the floor, turning the swiveling chair ever so slightly to the left. She could see Rusty’s eyes watching her over Stroh’s shoulder, but his face did not betray her. Twisting her hands painfully behind her, Sharon searched blindly for the correct angle so that the crease between her bound wrists was parallel to the table’s edge.

“I told you we would have the power to change each other again,” she heard him say to Rusty just as she found the proper angle.

Still without a sound, Sharon slid her taped arms along the edge of the table, holding herself steady with her angled bound feet against the floor and pushing hard against the table blindly. Still facing Rusty and the kneeling Stroh, Sharon realized it would be next to impossible to achieve this without making a distracting sound. She could feel the tape beginning to give, but dared not tear out of it. Not yet. Catching Rusty’s eyes again, she glanced pointedly down at the glass-strewn floor at his feet. He blinked once in acknowledgement, both of them ignoring Stroh’s words.

“The change ends here, Rusty.”

Rocking forward ever so slightly and rhythmically while maintaining Rusty’s gaze, Sharon blinked in time with her small motion. She blinked once, twice--

With the third blink, Rusty shifted in his chair, pressing his feet down on the shattered glass with a crunch and scrape at the precise moment that Sharon pressed her wrists against the edge of the table a final time, the tape tearing along the edge at last, the sound masked by Rusty’s feet pushing against the glass.

Across from her, Stroh began to rise to his feet again, turning back to face her without realizing what had happened. Immediately she shifted silently back into her original position, hiding her newly freed hands behind her back again and straightening in the chair. Her mind now jumping to the next obstacle, the tape still wrapped around her ankles and her weapon out of reach in the bag on the floor behind her, she gave Rusty a calming, reassuring glance.

They were going to get out of this.

It was not until Stroh fully turned on the spot that Sharon realized how very wrong she was.

Her gun was not in her purse. It was there, on his belt.

Stroh must have taken it while she was still out cold, holster and all.

Rusty did not seem to have noticed the abrupt change in their circumstances. He was glancing pointedly at the space between the couch and the coffee table between them, silently communicating his apparent readiness to drop into the gap at her word. Stroh was standing to Sharon’s left again, on the opposite side of the table from the sofa, still closer to Rusty than herself. Stroh’s attention was primarily focussed on her son rather than Sharon. When Rusty’s eyes came back up to hers, she moved her head an infinitesimal amount, first to the right, then to the left before meaningfully cutting her gaze down toward the gun clipped at Stroh’s hip.

This time, Stroh did not miss Rusty’s eyes following Sharon’s down to the gun. He chuckled softly, ominously, and pulled it out of the holster.

“You didn’t really think I was going to leave this lying around, did you?”

He stepped behind Rusty again as he spoke, holding the gun up to the light. “You want to remind the Captain here what happened the last time I didn’t take care of the weapons in the house?”

Rusty didn’t make a sound, ignoring his tormentor as Stroh leaned over the back of the chair, holding the gun close to Rusty’s face.

He seemed to speak to both of them now, or maybe just to himself. But as Stroh’s eyes bored into Sharon’s grey-green ones across the room, she knew these next words were for her benefit.

Not her benefit. Her agony.

“I never liked guns,” Stroh said slowly, turning Sharon’s weapon over in his hand almost carelessly, the barrel of the gun just barely clipping the side of Rusty’s face as it spun in Stroh’s palm. “Not as a tool, at any rate.” Sharon’s fists clenched behind her. Rusty flinched away from the gun, fear flashing across his face.

Rusty hated guns. It had taken Sharon a few months to figure it out. She was not much of a gun person herself; they were just a necessary part of the job. Rusty never said anything, not even to this day. The first few months under her roof, he had just given her a wide berth when he could see it clipped to her waistline or peeking out of her purse. At first, Sharon had accepted it as an appropriate skittish reaction to her alone. It was not until weeks after his arrival, when she had purposely taken him aside after dinner one night to have her well-rehearsed, if slightly out of practice, ‘gun talk,’ that Sharon had put two and two together and realized that it was not Sharon that made him uncomfortable in those moments when he shied away from her. Well, not wholly her. Part of it was a not-insignificant amount of discomfort at the gun on her person. She was quite sure that he understood and did not begrudge the need for her gun and those of her detectives. He was around them almost constantly, all those months with security and all the hours he spent in and around her Murder Room. But he had no wish to be near them unless absolutely necessary. And without either of them ever speaking of it, she had accommodated his needs in that area. Sharon had always been careful about it at home before, maintaining habits begun when she had had small children in her home, but with Rusty it was different. She made sure he knew where she kept it without leaving it out in the open. Made sure he felt safe and not threatened by it. That he was aware but not uncomfortable. But he still didn’t like them.

As Sharon watched Stroh handling the gun right next to Rusty’s face, she thought that Stroh probably knew this too. That he was doing it on purpose.

“Guns are effective, of course,” Stroh was saying now, eyes still locked on Sharon’s. “But they’re so loud...so messy.” He straightened up behind Rusty, never breaking eye contact with Sharon as he lifted the gun in front of him, pointing it at her. As the handle of the gun passed Rusty’s cheek again, Stroh flicked his wrist almost casually so that the metal barrel caught Rusty under the eye, hard enough this time to break the skin. Her son made a small involuntary sound muffled by the tape over his lips and shrank away from Stroh defensively.

Stroh leveled the gun at her now, both staring down the other for a long time, a silent challenge. Then his finger moved just slightly on the grip, and she heard rather than saw the magazine fall out of the bottom of the gun, clunking to the ground beside Rusty’s still-bound legs.

“There’s no finesse to killing with a gun,” Stroh said conversationally, as if he were discussing the decision to use a pen instead of a pencil.

His other hand came up to grip the slide on top of the weapon, pulling it back quickly to release the bullet still in the chamber. Stroh was still standing so close to Rusty, towering over his chair, that the bullet popped out of the chamber and fell straight into Rusty’s lap before rolling down onto the floor.

The gun completely unloaded now, Stroh tossed it carelessly to the sofa.

“Killing with your bare hands, though,” he continued quietly, looking down at the young man below him, “that is almost an art form.” Without further ado, he closed his hands around Rusty’s throat.

And Sharon leapt.

Rusty’s strangled cry seemed to give her aging body an extra push as she all but flew across the gap between her seat and Rusty’s, her legs ripping out of the tape that had immobilized them with a strength she had forgotten she had, a hand simultaneously pulling the tape off of her mouth. Before Stroh could do anything more than allow a flash of shock to cross his face, Sharon had jumped across the table, a hand shooting out to close around the unloaded gun on the far end of the sofa before she swung it around to collide with Stroh’s skull this time.

He went down with a grunt, releasing Rusty’s throat in surprise. With her free hand, Sharon roughly pulled Rusty by the shoulder out of the chair and all but threw him to the ground and into the narrow gap between the sofa and the coffee table. Gasping slightly for breath again through his nose, Rusty did not fight her action and fell flat to the floor where she pushed him, wrists and ankles still bound.

“Stay there,” she whispered sternly. “Whatever happens--”

Stroh had fallen to the ground on the other side of the chair Rusty had just vacated, but Sharon could see he was not unconscious. He was rolling over, his hands reaching desperately for something, anything--

Sharon dropped to the floor in a crouch momentarily, ignoring the small shards of glass cutting into her bare feet. The fingers of her free hand danced across the surface like a spider, searching fiercely for that narrow metal rectangle that could finally give her the upper hand. And at last her fingers closed around the mag, the ammunition she needed to end this. Simultaneously straightening to her full height once more and pushing the mag once more into the grip of the gun, Sharon turned back to her attacker, pivoting on the balls of her feet despite the glass, and pointing her weapon steadily at Stroh.

Before she had completed the turn or cocked the gun, however, she felt something slice through her left calf painfully. With a cry, the muscle gave way completely and something hot and wet flowed over her lower leg. Sharon fell heavily into the glass-strewn space between the chair and the narrow end of the table. She twisted awkwardly on the way down and her left shoulder collided with the edge of the table hard before the side of her face smashed into the sharp corner and she landed heavily on her back, blood immediately rising from her temple and into her eye, her glasses long gone once again.

Phillip Stroh towered over her now, blood from the gash Sharon had given him just moments ago dripping down the side of his cheek. The fingers of one hand were wrapped around the long jagged piece of glass he had cut her with.

The gun was still cold and heavy in her hand, caught behind her back on the floor. Judging from Stroh’s amused chuckle, he had not caught her rapid practiced reload when he had fallen. He brought a finger up to wipe away some of the blood on his own cheek with a rueful smile.

“Like I said. No finesse.”

He stepped closer, a foot resting on either side of her hips and lowering himself to crouch above her. The long shard of glass in his right hand had cut into his palm, his own blood mingling with hers. Stroh ignored the minor injury, bringing the sharp edge to Sharon’s throat, not quite slicing, but still drawing a small dot of blood to her skin.

Seizing her moment at last, Sharon pulled her right arm back out from its pinned position behind her back in a single fluid motion, releasing the safety on the weapon in her hand as it moved and bringing it to rest just under Stroh’s jaw.

“I don’t know,” she whispered to him. “I think there might be some finesse.”

Their faces only separated by a few inches, Sharon could see him rethinking the situation, calculating his options quickly. She saw the moment everything clicked into place. Stroh leaned back on his heels, withdrawing the glass shard from her neck in a sign of surrender.

Sharon did not lower the gun, however. She moved slightly to bring her smarting left arm up to steady her aim from the floor, but did not drop his gaze.

She saw it in his eyes a split second before he moved.

Stroh’s hands closed around the shard again, raising it high overhead before he started to bring it down hard and fast toward her chest.

Sharon did not miss a beat. Her finger squeezed the trigger one, two, three.

And finally he dropped.

* * *

Something was restraining her hands again.

Sharon’s eyes fluttered open to a dimly lit, unfamiliar room. Everything hurt; her face, her torso, her shoulder, her leg, both of her feet. There was a soft beeping next to her. Something heavy was weighing down her right wrist and hand. Her other arm was restrained in some complicated bandage, binding it up against her chest.

She blinked several times and everything came into better focus. But not perfectly, without her glasses. Sharon peered down at her right side to see what exactly was immobilizing her arm.

It was a person.

Well, not just any person. Her youngest son. Rusty was sitting in a chair next to her hospital bed, his head and neck leaning forward onto the bed to rest on her hand and lower arm. Both of his hands and arms were up on the bed as well, one resting on her forearm, the other flung down carelessly parallel to her legs. His face was turned toward her, and she could see that he was fast asleep.

Scrutinizing his face, she let out a small hum of concern when she saw the meticulous little line of stitches along his hairline. There were at least fifteen of them, somewhat hidden by his hair. She did not think there would be much of a scar. His eye was puffy, splotchy and purple as she had predicted; but his lip was not nearly so bad. Other than a few bruises on his neck that she could make out in the dim light and a little chafing on the wrist she could see clearly, he seemed otherwise unharmed.

Sharon tried to slip her hand out from under his cheek without waking him; but the moment her fingers moved against his face, he started, blinking slowly and raising his head up.

“Hey,” she whispered, trying to give him her usual soft smile. It hurt.

He straightened abruptly, immediately alert. “Hey. D’you--should I--I can go get someone--”

She shook her head kindly, quieting him. “No, honey. I don’t need anything.” Sharon tilted her head a little quizzically. “But why are you in here? Don’t you have your own room?” She was trying to remember how they had gotten here. She had called the ambulance herself, she knew that. She remembered pulling the tape off of Rusty’s mouth, tearing it off of both their wrists and ankles, blood continually trickling into her eye from the cut on her temple, a dead Phillip Stroh in the middle of her living room floor--

But no hospital. She did not remember this.

“You passed out in the ambulance,” Rusty whispered, correctly interpreting her expression. “You’ve been...uh, pretty out of it. But like, I was just a couple cuts and bruises. They stitched me up and basically kicked me out hours ago.” He shrugged a little self-consciously. “But I didn’t really want to go home with the Lieutenant again. And the condo is a crime scene, so…”

Nodding slowly, Sharon reached up with her newly freed hand to push the hair off of his forehead gently. Not a purely affectionate and unnecessary gesture this time, the tips of her fingers danced over the puckered pink skin there, and she shook her head and blinked back a few tears.

“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. I should have--”

Rusty pulled away from her sharply.

“Oh my God, Mom.” He chewed on the last word for a split second before spitting it out. He still seemed to teeter on the edge, swiveling between the two names so often now. Only in the last few months had ‘Sharon’ become more and more rare. She smiled in spite of herself at the word as it tumbled from his lips, a new card she could place amongst the rather tattered tiers of her life, another moment to add to the fragile castle of cards.

“I should have done what you said in the first place. It was stupid, and you were right.” His voice started to crack a little as he barreled on. “And you-you saved me--us. Again. And you’re all--” he gestured silently at her battered body, not meeting her eyes. “This is my fault, and I’m so, so sorry.”

Rusty started to cry as he broke off, leaning forward and resting his head on her lap in his anguish.

“Hey, hey,” she whispered soothingly, leaning over his head and combing her fingers through his hair softly and rocking them both as comfortably as she could. “It’s okay. We’re both okay.” After a few minutes, his tears subsided and he sat up again, breathing deeply.

Sharon pulled herself up in the bed to a more comfortable sitting position, shifting a little painfully over to the far side of the bed and reaching for the TV remote attached to the railing there. She patted the now-empty side of the hospital bed and shrugged at Rusty in the chair. She pulled the sheets back from her legs to make room.

“If I’m going to be stuck in this bed… Come on. Help me find something to watch.”

Rusty looked at her a little incredulously for a moment before shrugging himself and inching onto the bed with her. She settled back into the pillows, her uninjured arm around his back, Rusty’s head nestling into the space between her neck and shoulder comfortably. He started to flick through the channels without really paying attention. Sharon saw his eyes taking in their bare legs extending toward the end of the bed. Her gown covered hers down to her knees now that the sheets had been pushed aside, his shorts falling to a similar length. There was a long bandage wrapping around her calf nearest to him.

“What?” she whispered, elbowing him softly and pulling his eyes away.

He turned his leg next to hers slightly so that the light from the TV caught the old scar on his own leg. It was white and just barely visible now, years later, but she could make it out, long and thin across his calf.

“We match.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end. I hope that bit of fluff at the end made up for all the pain before it. I really hope you enjoyed it. It was much more difficult than I ever expected. I’m not really much of an action writer, in case you hadn’t noticed. Anyway. Thanks for all your support with this, and I hope to see you all again after the hiatus!


End file.
